Design and evaluation of a new pedagogical approach to improve the learning of quality tools in an Engineering undergraduate program

Abstract

The comprehensive approach that combines theory with practice in an industrial engineering course becomes essential to prepare students effectively for the professional world. For a student in this program, the understanding and application of quality tools is critical for their training and professional development, as they provide systematic and effective methods to identify, analyze and solve complex problems in industrial processes. This knowledge is required to improve efficiency, quality, and competitiveness of almost any organization. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, most universities resorted to virtualizing courses. Despite the advantages that this change brought, such as autonomous learning and time management, it also brought some disadvantages that negatively affected the learning objectives, such as the lack of stable internet connection or that some students have obsolete PCs. In addition, other disadvantages of the virtual learning included lack of motivation, lack of concentration, low participation of students during class, difficulty in identifying the degree of interaction between students, among others. For all these reasons, a blended learning methodology is proposed, it combines virtual activities with the concrete and tangible experience of face-to-face activities. The proposed pedagogical strategy seeks to improve the achievement of the course learning objectives for the session that deals with quality tools. Among the learning objectives, the aim is for students to solve complex problems like those in the industry, therefore, this article also proposes the design of a case, based on a real experience in the service industry. The implementation of the proposed methodology is presented for a practical session of an undergraduate Industrial Engineering course, in which the quality tools are used to solve a complex case.